Chapter Text
101 years after the death of Himmel the Hero
6 years after the death of Stark the Warrior
5 years after the death of Fern the Mage
Over the many years of Eisen’s life, he had come to appreciate the quiet moments at sunrise. Every morning he would sip his tea and watch the world wake up slowly around him. It was a habit acquired with age.
He thought of his student Stark, who had never been a fan of early mornings as a child, but had nonetheless grown up into a fine young man who began the day at a respectable time. He believed the credit for that went to Fern who, in contrast, had always been a responsible child. This was a particularly remarkable trait given she had the misfortune of growing up with such irresponsible adults as Heiter and Frieren.
Although by the end, he supposed that Heiter had somehow grown up into an adult who could at least pretend to be responsible, and Frieren was the kind of adult with whom he would trust his life if not an alarm clock.
Somewhere along the way, he had become the kind of adult who thought other adults were children. When had he become so old?
The drunken priest had done something right by passing before his student. Outliving Stark - and even Fern, for that matter - felt as unnatural as a parent outliving their child. But they would continue to live on in his memory through the stories of their many adventures that Stark had shared with him throughout the years.
His thoughts then turned to Frieren as it often did these days. One day he would no longer be able to shoulder the burden of living at her side; she would live long past all of them. He could feel it in his bones, that soon he too would return to the earth. He looked forward to the day that the Goddess of Creation would lead him to Aureole and praise him for a life well lived, as she had done for those who had gone before him.
But before that, he hoped that he could meet Frieren at least once more.
The last time he had seen her was at Fern’s funeral. Even Serie had attended the funeral rites for Frieren’s student, who had followed his own precious student to Aureole within a single winter. The two elves had sized each other up like stray cats, but at least managed to behave for the ceremony itself.
After the long illustrious list of Fern’s friends and students had dispersed, Frieren had decided to depart on another journey. Eisen had seen her off, feeling oddly unbalanced without Himmel and Heiter at his side this time. He had been worried about her travelling alone after so long with company, but as she left she had seemed wistful rather than sad.
That had been a few years ago, and he hadn’t heard anything since from Frieren, which wasn’t surprising. As someone who measured long stretches of time in units of centuries, and frequently dawdled for decades at a time, she was a very dilatory correspondent. Fern had scolded her so much that she had improved marginally over the years, which was an impressive feat given all of the combined nagging of the Hero Party hadn’t made a difference. Then again, Himmel had been a terrible enabler of all of Frieren’s bad habits.
He enjoyed the warmth that the tea brought to his tired body, as the darkness first bled into outlines of familiar trees, and then light slowly unveiled the fields that led to his cabin.
When it crested the horizon, his first thought was that it must be a monster. Its silhouette was jagged and looming, and it emanated an unsettling green glow in the half light of dawn as it lurched towards him. His axe was in his hands before he had finished processing the sight of it.
No matter how peaceful the Southern Lands had been lately, he was first and foremost a warrior. There was nothing more familiar to him than the smell of honing oil and the curl of well worn leather against calloused palms.
He hurtled towards the beast, wanting to take it down cleanly before it detected him. He had replaced enough broken furniture when Stark was living with him and unaware of his own strength, that he had no desire to bring an avoidable fight to his front door.
He had already leapt into the air with his arm outstretched, axe aimed towards the eerie glowing core when he saw a familiar face beaming up at him.
An elf with silver hair and green eyes.
Frieren.
With a disgruntled huff, Eisen flipped over in mid-air and landed alongside Frieren as she brought her contraption to a juddering halt. She jumped out to meet him, but her shifting weight broke the unhappy truce that kept the cart in check. As he watched, the front wheels splintered off and raced for freedom into the undergrowth, never to be seen again. The frame crashed downwards, brought to its knees in surrender with a grating screech.
Frieren looked behind her with a faint moue of disappointment.
“The Zonaite charges were struggling on the last leg of the journey, but I had hoped that the Ultrahand Fuse glue would hold. Looks like I pushed it beyond its limit.”
Eisen didn’t understand half of what Frieren had said but it was nice that some things never changed.
“It’s good to see you, Frieren”, Eisen said before she could start checking her cargo for damages.
Frieren’s eyes lit up as she turned back towards him. “It’s good to see you too Eisen.”
Now that everything was still, Eisen took a good look at the cart. It was piled high with junk, although in his mind he could clearly hear Frieren’s petulant voice protesting “this is all rare treasure!”
He decided not to say anything aloud.
The machinery at the front was probably what allowed it to move without a horse. Eisen had never seen such technology before, but he found that the world often moved too fast these days for him to keep track.
The front wheels were a lost cause but the rest of the frame was still held together with a thick green paste, so Eisen cautiously hoisted the cart onto his shoulders. When it didn’t immediately fall apart, he started walking back towards his cabin before it had the chance to change its mind.
“You were travelling overnight?” Eisen asked, surprised that Frieren wasn’t still snoring away somewhere for another few hours at least.
Frieren looked sheepish as she replied, “I spent the last of my money yesterday in town on a few grimoires that were published while I was away.”
She stopped to rummage around in her briefcase, her entire arm disappearing in there before she pulled out a gaudy looking volume embossed with gold leaf. Her tone shifted to something proud.
“Look, this is a fake grimoire they claimed was written by Fern! Isn’t it amazing? It's only been a few years and she already has forgeries. It took decades for me to come across Master Flamme’s first forgery.”
Frieren announced that she was keeping it as a memento as she carefully returned the book into the depths of her suitcase.
Eisen chuckled at her obvious pride. “Little Fern grew up well, didn’t she?”
Frieren smiled at that and then said, “That’s why I didn’t have any money for an inn last night but since I was so close, I decided to push through instead of setting up camp. If you hadn’t come to meet me when you did I would have been miserable levitating all of this to your cabin by myself.”
Eisen would have asked Frieren about her travels, but her words were already punctuated by long yawns. She looked like she was one blink away from falling asleep on her feet. The prudent thing to do would be to chivvy Frieren along while she was still awake instead of distracting her with more questions. Otherwise, her supernatural ability to fall asleep mid-step would saddle him with the work of carrying both her and the cart back home.
Himmel never complained about it when it happened during their travels. He had relished the opportunity to carry Frieren and what he thought was discreetly sniff her hair. But given that Eisen was not a lovesick fool, he didn’t have quite the same tolerance for Frieren’s antics.
He carefully lowered the cart outside the cabin and hustled Frieren off to the guest bedroom to rest.